The Pimpin' Power of Pine Sol

The lovely Diane Amos is back (she IS Pine-Sol for me & many Americans) hawking product. One of the earlier Pine-Sol commercials paired her with a rather slavish looking mopping young buck. Now she's paired with what looks like a well-to-do guy. He drives a fancy car and he wears a suit, he could be fronting, but I'll roll with it. He never rips his shirt off like the made the black guy do, but I'll reserve judgment there too.

I think I have it all figured out now. The Pine - Sol lady runs a high priced S&M brothel! She flipped her day work job into a lil night and day service, nah mean. These men now pay her to come over from their high-paying, high-pressure jobs to trade it all for an $2000 dollar an hour Sadistic Sweeping and Masochistic Mopping sessions! The hallways will later echo whiney squeals of, "make me mop mommy..."  Of course the can't show the whole dirty deed here. But I totally get it now. There's deep stuff going on here... or so it would seem.

But seriously, this still sorta reeks of uneasy handling of a throw-back type of brand mascot in the hands of a few folks who don't understand the African American ethotic situation in 2010. They have a firm grasp on how this type of character would have worked in the 1950's "Mad Men" era. But seem to be a little wobbly handling a modern day African American woman brand rep. The African American values, disposition & character is over simplified. For example: the answer to the backlash of the "black man mopping" commercial is to show a white man mopping...? There, all better now? No, not at all right. Keep moving her ahead please.  A new mopper with an English accent does not cure all sins.

There is the heart of a good campaign here, it just needs a little more involved hands. What do you think?

P.S. Can we hire an African American hair/wig stylist?

 FilthyGrandeur said...

in all seriousness, i'm getting a little tired of these commercials where sex and cleaning are linked--think of the new Swiffer campaign. sorry, i am not in a relationship with my cleaning supplies. i will not lay in bed with pine sol. most commercials featuring women will often equate use of the product with sex. i'm sure we can recall more than one racy burger commercial. it's downright pornographic. although, on the same token, it's nice seeing a fat woman in a sexualized role, however brief. but then sexualization of a black woman is problematic too...damn, my head is spinning. moving on. 

i think the contrast in the white mopper vs. black mopper is very telling: white one has agency; he arrives, delivers the pine sol. he gets to speak. he begins mopping with shirt sleeves rolled up. even his tie is still on. the black mopper is already in her home. he's essentially a prop. he gets no speaking lines. his shirt is off, giving us full view of his body (black masculine hypersexualization anyone?) for our consumption. this is not equality in advertising.

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The Power of Pine-Sol Imagery

It appears Pine-Sol new scent is less than appealing to more than just me.  I don't think it's earth-shattering imagery. I don't think it's going to change a child's self image. But I do think it's not the best advertising. If there is a black person involved I wouldn't be very surprised. There is often a lot of self sacrifice involved in working in advertising for people of color. I think about two minutes of serious self introspection by any slightly aware advertising creative of color and they could begin to figure out this may not be the best line of concepts.

I wouldn't go so far as to use the "R" word here, but the preponderance of this type of imagery creates as-well-as reinforces the racial stereotypes and prejudices that lead to the perpetuation of the dreaded "R" word. The black woman/man so closely tied to these subservient roles is a problem. I understand the attempt to "glamorize" the Pine-Sol lady. But it just seems a poor after thought.

More diversity in advertising now!
That is all.

Pepper seems perturbed.

Someone at the Times seems almost tickled.

Jim @ BNet says that we are all over thinking it.

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Carol H. Williams, Ad Agency Maven, Puts Visa, Nike, Clorox and Burger King on Blast

Zondra Hughes from Rolling Out

Rolling out publisher Munson Steed and Carol H. Williams.“Visa, Nike, Clorox and Burger King have systematically ignored African American consumers,” a charged up Carol H. Williams told a captive audience during the 40th Annual Rainbow Push Coalition convention held in Chicago.

Carol H. Williams is an institution in the advertising and marketing industry. Not the African American advertising and marketing industry, mind you, but the industry as a whole, as she is responsible for some of the most memorable ad campaigns including Secret deodorant’s timeless pitch, “strong enough for a man, but made for a woman.” Carol H. Williams
Williams and a panel of advertising and media experts discussed the challenges that face African American advertising agencies and media companies, as some major corporations have greatly reduced — or eliminated — their spending budgets for the urban market.
Carol H. Williams encouraged the audience to get behind the joint effort to make companies that rely heavily on African American consumers accountable, and reinvest those profits into black and urban media buys, and in their respective communities.
Following is an excerpt from her remarks.

“Our pain is that you don’t understand your power.
“I understand that the Clorox company excels because you exist. Who do you think buys bleach, that is the multibillion dollar product, hypothetically, that Clorox sells? It’s bleach. It’s the pillar of their whole industry. But you go inside a Clorox bleach company and everyone in there looks just like their bleach.
“But they’re moving billions of dollars through yet, 42 percent of bleach is bought by African Americans and another 27 percent is bought by Hispanics. The rest of it is bought by ethnics. When you actually look at the Caucasian consumption of bleach, it’s less than 18 percent.
“Every single one of you have a bottle of Pine Sol, I don’t have to look in your cabinets, I can look at your numbers. African Americans buys 82 percent of Pine Sol. Who sells Pine Sol? Clorox.
“The brand manager is white, the assistant brand manager is white and [so are] the brand manager over the brand manager, the media manager, and you people demand nothing of this company. The only black person I ever saw at Clorox was me, and the receptionist. We have to create a situation that supports Rev. Jackson, and we have to figure out how to do that strategically, because our community will never be uplifted if we don’t demand more of these companies.”
Adding insult to injury, Williams explained, is the throng of African Americans who identify themselves as “other” on the U.S. Census. “A lot of these companies have the conspiracies going on, where we can’t even check the numbers to know how many are truly buying these automobiles. We just got a hint. To track these numbers, we need a budget. To track what you’re doing I need a budget. When I go and say, I need a budget, they say, ‘well, the Census says these people are checking other.’
“When did you figure out that ‘other’ was a race? I’d like to know. Other means give this money to somebody other than black. I understand the need to have self-identity, but when it comes to the Census, and the government, they’re talking about money, what dollar goes where. And you’re checking ‘other.’
“We have to get smarter than this. … Obama, do you know what he checked? He checked African American. Don’t you think that man knows who his mother was? He understands what that means.”
Carol H. Williams advised the audience that “we have to stop participating in this environment as if we’re not cognizant of what this environment is all about.”

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Pine-Sol Parody

Pine-Sol does Tom Ford?


Spotted and the cleaned from the always fresh smelling Multi-Cult Classics https://sites.google.com/site/mayuradocs/PinIt.png

Pine-Sol: Intensity

Who knew mopping could give you abs like that? That is one slavish looking mopper. She makes so much money cleaning floors that she can afford a floor cleaner of her own? I guess I'm glad she's not just a domestic any more. She pops up in the middle of the ocean near submarines and everything. But that "Aunt Jemimah," "Uncle Ben" air still lingers a bit.


Jennifer said...
L.O.L. I'm not sure what to make of this. I don't know that the mop guy looks slavish...it looks like they've placed these two in a Harlequin (spelling?) Romance novel sort of. The guys gives off a black Fabio vibe (sans the hair). Interestingly, however, the handsome mopper never touches the woman, leaving me feeling like black women, large women, older women (together and as separate identities) are still seen in a sort of asexual way (not that some hip hop videos help, where hypersexuality/objectification is the order of the day)...although I suppose I should assume some progress since these two are at least in the same room and he smiled at her.

This leads me to the other question...what is the "Power of Pine Sol"...to get a good looking man to mop while you lay in the bed? It isn't moving. I don't think that's worth my $3.99 or whatever it costs. Now if that mopper dropped the mop and embraced the lovely lady, they might get some people to cough up the coins, lol!

That Jennifer's brilliant!

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Why Multicultural Shops Have An Advantage

From AdAge  As U.S. Population Shifts, General-Market Agencies Need to Do Their Homework

The advertising industry still refuses to make good on old and oft promised diversity initiatives. The industry may ignore the lack of diversity and the dearth of women in upper management, but it will truly put itself in peril by ignoring the cultural shift taking place.

America is expected to become a nation where the majority population will be non-white by 2050; but the cultural impact is way ahead of schedule.

No one is better suited than the current-day multicultural shops to tackle the marketing needs of the future. It will require massive rethinking and retooling, but they already understand the code-switching nature of dialing into niche cultures while also communicating to the general culture.

Despite the election of Barack Obama, America has proved to be anything but post-racial. Many factions throughout the states have in some ways dug themselves in deeper to cultural roots.

Still, we've seen advertisers attempt to cross cultural lines and promulgate notions of one-world advertising.

Some cases have been successful. But the cases where agencies haven't done their in-depth homework into cultural sensitivities, the results have been nightmarish.

For example there was the Nivea "Re-civilize Yourself" ad in 2011. The ad portrays a black man tossing a disembodied head that is afro-coiffed and wearing facial hair. To the uninitiated it seems like an innocent concept. But within the African-American culture the afro is such a classic representation of so many different enduring cultural hallmarks it almost defies definition. It denotes black power, freedom of choice, self expression, beauty, defiance and strength -- just to name a few things. For a grooming product to attempt to market itself to an African-American audience in such a manner was unfathomable. There have been many other brands that have made similar gaffes: Summer's Eve's sassy black talking vagina; Pine-Sol's subservient cleaning lady; Popeyes Southern sounding "Chicken Queen" and countless others. I am certain most of them were done innocently enough. And many of you reading this may not even be aware that these efforts rubbed people the wrong way.

But today's social-media landscape lends itself to hearty and mercurial retribution. Two words: Black Twitter.

Multicultural agencies -- or ethnic agencies, if you will -- are rarely caught off guard by their campaigns. They've not only done the cultural research, they've lived the life. Many ethnicities in America live in varying degrees inside and outside of the mainstream. We dwell in the dominant culture for large portions of the day. At other points we switch modes of behavior, verbalization and social norms. To put it simply, we slide between two worlds and understand them both very well.

Conversely, too many "general market" advertisers and agencies don't know what they don't know. This isn't a point of strident ignorance on their part. It's not borne out of maliciousness. But the fact is, since they live their entire lives in the dominant culture, they don't have to know about the other cultures. Until now. This puts general-market shops at a rather large disadvantage and gives an edge to multicultural shops.

There are a number of such shops making inroads into bigger accounts and offering smarter, broader, better fitting marketing. Shops like Walton Isaacson, LatinWorks and GlobalHuealready have a smart mix of employees and have had success in both markets.

I think of them as ultra-cultural marketers. They have the ability to deeply permeate more than one market to great effect.

Of course, general-market shops could hire and foster these particular skill sets; but after decades of promises that still hasn't happened.

At the same time, some multicultural agencies are looking to go general market. The smart ones will prepare themselves as the general market is coming to us.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Craig Brimm is a 17-year advertising professional; he blogs at kissmyblackads.blogspot.com

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